Another amazing E3 has come and gone. My key takeaway from this year's show is that the upcoming year will bring the beginning of 3D gaming. Sure we've had some previous forays like Nintendo's Virtual Boy, but you can really see how Sony and Nintendo are going to be pushing the technology hard. After getting a chance to try each company's approach to entering the 3rd dimension, I definitely think Nintendo has it right.
Nintendo's new portable, the 3DS, features some pretty amazing 3D technology that doesn't require the player to wear glasses. Although I was skeptical going into the demo, I came away impressed. While traditional 3D movies create an effect where items pop out of the screen at you, the 3DS feels like their is depth to the screen, where the action is taking place inside of a shadowbox. Nintendo smartly has provided a slider to tweak the amount of 3D present, allowing players to disable the feature so they won't get nauseous when playing on trains, planes, etc. I also imagine the ability set the level of 3D means that games won't require the feature to be enabled. After spending some time playing on the 3DS, I knew I wanted one. Sony is taking a much more cinematic approach to their 3D implementation for the PS3. A player has to wear powered glasses, and the action comes out of the screen. I played some racing games to experience the technology, and was thoroughly underwhelmed. The glasses are uncomfortable and expensive, the effect blurred the graphics and made them murkier, and after a short time I started to get a headache. I don't see myself going out to spend a fortune buying a set of goggles to allow for multiplayer fun, and I feel the same way about this that I do about 3D TV's: meh. Ultimately, I think Nintendo has come up with an innovative way to add a new dimension to gaming that really adds to the experience while Sony is pushing a technology to get us to spend more money on something that doesn't make the game any better.
